Today we’re continuing our Q&A series with Bell Curves alumni who are currently pursuing or just recently finished their MBAs. Recent posts have included Q&As with Goreleigh Willis, Crystal Forde , and Kibra Yemane about their first year MBA experiences. This time around Jessica Williams shares some of her insights and advice on her MBA experience. Jessica completed her MBA at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business

Why did you decide to apply to business school?
Business school had been on the radar since my days in undergrad, but I never knew what that looked like back then. As I was rounding out that 2.5 year mark at work, I knew that what I was doing professionally, although I was learning a lot, was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I wanted to take my career in another direction and get exposure to something that was more fulfilling. There were a few interests that I had swirling in my head, so in order to help make sense of those ideas and to help turn those into reality, I joined the organization MLT and thus began my journey to business school!

As part of making sure you’re fully prepared for these tests our teachers often sacrifice their time, energy, and sanity and brave the Prometrics centers so that we can report on not only the content of the test be the experience of testing. This post is from one of our fabulous GRE teachers, Kara, who recently went in to take the actual GRE; here is her report:

Today’s post comes from a Bell Curves guest blogger and former student. Kayla Baker is a first-year MBA Candidate at the S.C. Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. Prior to business school, she worked at the JPMorgan Private Bank for 3 years as a Junior Portfolio Manager; most recently, Kayla worked as an Account Manager at the education non-profit, Citizen Schools. At Johnson, Kayla is a member of the General Management and High-Technology clubs. Kayla holds a B.A. in Economics from Bowdoin College.

In this, her inaugural post, Kayla shares some thoughts on how to best prepare for the rigors of business school and maximize your experience.

While top business schools attract some of the most ambitious, successful people, returning to school comes with a few challenges. Sure, there’s a reward in the end, but in order to get there, I’d like offer a few considerations to help you prepare:

Today’s guest post is co-authored by Pauline Jennett, a Doctoral Candidate in the Educational Leadership Field. A former associate director of admissions from Harvard Business School, Ms. Jennett evaluated and interviewed domestic and international applicants. Prior to joining The MBA Exchange as an Admissions Consultant, she served as director of recruitment and admissions for non-profit career development organization Management Leadership for Tomorrow, an alumni officer for Boston University, and in sales and marketing management roles with Coca-Cola, Gillette, Procter & Gamble, and IBM. Ms. Jennett earned her MBA from The Wharton School, where she was a member of the Dean’s Graduate Student Advisory group and studied at Instituto de Estudies Superiores de la Empresa (IE). She has a master of divinity degree cum laude from Boston University, and bachelor of business administration degree from Baruch College where she was a Baruch Scholar. She has traveled to 36 countries on 5 continents and is conversant in Spanish.

In my educational leadership doctoral program, I am taking a fascinating class on Psychological Testing. In the textbook “Assessment Procedures for Counselors and Helping Professionals” (Drummond, 2010), the authors note that “despite the lack of a clear definition of intelligence, assessing intelligence typically encompasses measuring one’s ability to understand

complex ideas, adapt effectively to the environment, think abstractly, learn from experience, learn quickly, and engage in various forms of reasoning.” Any student who has ever taken the SAT, GMAT, GRE, or LSAT, among other school admissions exams, can see remnants of these factors in the testing sections and question paradigms.

Since most colleges don’t require SAT Subject Tests (click here for our post on which colleges require the tests), most students will not need to take them. However, if you’re one of the lucky few students applying to one of the 160 colleges in the United States that require or recommend the tests, you’ll need to take them.

Which SAT Subject Tests Should You Take?
For most students, the answer to which Subject Tests to take is “the ones that you’ll do the best on.” Most colleges that require or recommend Subject Tests do not require or recommend a specific test. Instead, they require a particular number of tests (either 2 or 3) and leave the rest of the

Our friends at Direct Hits recently published this advice for making the most of your Junior year and we thought we should share it with you. Also if you’re getting ready for the SAT or PSAT you should pick up their books which has a great list of words that commonly appear on the SAT.

For those of you who are juniors, the HALCYON days of summer have come to an end and the dreaded year has begun. While you may be feeling DISCOMFITED or even TIMOROUS about the upcoming year, let us DISPEL the PERVASIVE rumors that junior year is necessarily going to be the BANE of your existence, presenting only INSURMOUNTABLE challenges. Although 11th grade can be stressful, you can DEVISE and IMPLEMENT a FEASIBLE plan to THWART the customary headaches of junior year.

take them?” Well, keep reading and by the end of this you should have as clear an answer as it’s possible to give.

What are SAT Subject Tests?SAT Subject Tests are one hour exams on a variety of topics. They provide colleges a more detailed insight into your academic skills in a particular subject area than the SAT does. Many parents may remember hearing about or taking the Achievement Tests (if you graduated high school in the 80s or 90s) or the SAT IIs (in the first half of the 00s). Well, “SAT Subject Tests” is simply the latest name for those same exams.

EssaySnark is honored for the opportunity to share thoughts on MBA admissions with Bell Curve’s GMAT students today! We’re going to tackle a subject head-on to debunk some myths about race and ethnicity and how it can impact your chances for getting in.

We get questions sometimes from people who are thinking about applying to business school. They hear that there’s an advantage if you’re a minority candidate, and they wonder if that’s them. The color of their skin is non-white, so you might think that they automatically fall into that “minority” category. If you ask the U.S. government, then anybody who’s not Caucasian is a minority – you can see the CDC’s definition here. If you’re not a white dude (or chick) then doesn’t that mean you’ll have an easier time getting into bschool?

Today we’re continuing our Q&A series with Bell Curves alumni who are currently pursuing or just recently finished their MBAs. Recent posts have included Q&As with Goreleigh Willis and Crystal Forde about their first year MBA experiences. This time around Kibra Yemane shares some of her insights and advice on her MBA experience. Kibra completed her MBA at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.

Why did you decide to apply to business school?

I applied to business school in order to transition to a career in Human Resources. Prior to business school, I worked for a public accounting firm for about six years. While I enjoyed my time, I also realized that I was more passionate about talent management, recruiting, diversity – areas that typically fall under the HR umbrella. When I did some more research, I realized that more and more companies placed an emphasis on the HR function – and were interested in training the next crop of HR leaders through leadership development programs. When I realized one of the requirements for this program was an advanced degree, I knew the MBA was the next logical step for me.

With a growing number of schools accepting the GRE for the MBA, we constantly get questions about which test people should take, so here are a few considerations to help students answer that question of GMAT or GRE:

1. The Advantage of History. The GMAT is the gold standard for the MBA application. Institutions have no questions about what GMAT scores mean and how to compare them retrospectively to students in their programs both current and past. Only recently (the last half-decade) has the number of schools accepting the GRE increased significantly. Advantage: GMAT.